A yellow Jeep placed outside Porco home

BRENDAN J. LYONS Senior writer

Published 1:00 am, Thursday, August 3, 2006

GOSHEN -- A former neighbor who spotted a yellow Jeep in the driveway of Peter and Joan Porco's residence on the night they were bludgeoned was the last witness called by prosecutors, who rested Wednesday after nearly a month of testimony from more than 70 witnesses.

"Your honor, at this time, the people rest," Chief Assistant District Attorney Michael P. McDermott said.

Before declaring an end to their proof in the murder trial of Christopher Porco, McDermott called Marshall Gokey to the stand, asking the former Bethlehem resident about his drive to work before dawn on Nov. 15, 2004.

That was the day Peter and Joan Porco had been found brutally beaten with an ax inside their Delmar home. Just before 4 a.m., Gokey contends he saw Christopher Porco's distinctive Jeep in the couple's driveway at a time when prosecutors say the crime was unfolding.

Gokey, a 51-year-old construction superintendent who now lives in Florida, said it was a Monday and that he left early to get to a job site more than two hours away. He departed around that time almost every Monday, he said, leaving his wife and stepson for the work week before returning on Friday nights.

During weekends that summer, "I spent most of my time outside around the house ... puttering around," Gokey said.

On occasion, he would spot a yellow Jeep driving up the tightly built residential street, his eyes drawn to it because the young man behind the wheel liked to drive fast, he said.

Gokey never met anyone in the Porco family. "All I know is it would turn into a driveway down on the right," he said, identifying the home as the Porco residence.

It was about 3:45 a.m. when he pulled out of his driveway and turned on his high beams, heading slowly up Brockley Drive toward Delaware Avenue, one of the town's main thoroughfares. Gokey said he glanced to his right up Grantwood Road, and then to his left as he passed a small access road leading to a sewer pumping station. It was his ritual, he said, to take note of any strange cars parked near his house, in part because of his odd work hours and the fact he would leave his family so early in the day.

Photographs of the neighborhood already in evidence show that most of the leaves had fallen from the trees by that time.

As he passed the Porco residence, Gokey said he looked to his right and noticed the yellow Jeep, like Christopher Porco's, tucked in the right side of the driveway, about 15 feet from the road. The front end was facing the garage, he said.

Gokey stumbled in his answers about the type of Jeep it was, calling it a "Renegade," a "Cherokee," and a "CJ-5," at various times.

"My mistake," he told Porco's attorney, Laurie Shanks, whose first question centered on why he called it a "Cherokee," which is an SUV. "It's a Renegade-style Jeep. ... It seemed to be closer to the trees on the right ... a little bit down from the garage."

Shanks asked Gokey a series of questions about how long he had looked to his left as he passed the pumping-station service road, which is almost directly across from the Porco residence.

"I glanced," he said, explaining that he did it to see if there were any strange cars, or deer that might try to dart in front of his vehicle.

McDermott said prosecutors wanted Gokey to be the last witness the jury heard from their side.

"Mr. Gokey, we anticipated, was going to be a strong witness," McDermott said outside court. "We wanted to end strong. We started off strong ... I think Mr. Gokey putting his Jeep in the driveway at the time the crime was committed was pretty important."

Porco's other attorney, Terence L. Kindlon, said he intends to call a private investigator who will testify that in the darkness, and taking into account Gokey's estimated speed of between 15 and 20 mph, it would have been difficult for him to see the Jeep.

"At the end of the day, his testimony, while important, it's not game over," Kindlon said. "Once you start to think about it, it doesn't make any sense. We think that Mr. Gokey was just trying to be helpful to the police and that he's a little confused."

Gokey contacted the police a couple days after the murder, telling them about what he'd seen that night. They drove to his construction site and showed him at least one photograph of Porco's Jeep, which he identified as the vehicle in the driveway, he said.

The defense opened their case Wednesday afternoon with two witnesses who were longtime and close friends of Peter and Joan Porco.

Fennell testified that Joan Porco had confided to her that in September 2004, she had been scared one night when she spotted someone who appeared to be a man walk up their driveway. The person fled when the lights were activated by a motion sensor.

"She said a very scary thing happened to me," Fennell said.

On Dec. 14, 2004, after suddenly recalling her conversation with Joan Porco about the stranger, Fennell said she told McDermott about it. Later that day, a Bethlehem detective sergeant, John Cox, and a State Police investigator, Bill Gray, visited Fennell and questioned her about the conversation.

Defense attorneys contend police never took the incident seriously. Prosecutors said police interviewed more than 200 neighbors and never generated any leads about the person Joan Porco said she saw in the driveway.

Under cross-examination, Fennell said Joan Porco also was very scared in November 2002 when she believed someone had burglarized their Brockley Drive home and stolen two computers. Christopher Porco's attorneys have conceded that he stole the computers from his parents, staging a break-in while he was home from college for Thanksgiving weekend.

Polster spent much of her direct testimony describing the Porco family. She gave long answers in which she recounted that Christopher and his older brother, Johnathan, had embraced her adopted son, Fred, who has developmental disabilities.

"It's been a close buddy relationship," said Polster, whose husband, John Polster, has served as Joan Porco's attorney since shortly after the attack.

At Albany Medical Center Hospital, where Joan Porco underwent several surgeries and had remained in an extended coma, Linda Polster said Christopher Porco, then 21, was very "subdued" during that period.

"He was just very concerned about her condition ... trying to make sense out of what was going on in his life," Polster said. "He seemed like a little boy who was hurting."

Under question from Shanks, Polster said police had never approached her at anytime to get information from her about Joan and Peter Porco and their relationship with their children.

McDermott asked Polster only one question during his cross-examination.

"Mrs. Polster, you don't know anything about the murder, do you?"

"I do not know anything about the murder, no" she responded.

The trial is scheduled to resume today.

Brendan J. Lyons can be reached at 454-5547 or by e-mail at blyons@timesunion.com.